Walking the Wall

"Blessed is he who finds happiness in his own foolishness. For he will always be happy".

– Chade Meng

Yesterday, keeping Pema Chodron’s directive to "start now" or "start where you are" instead of waiting. I decided to go out in the backyard during a gorgeous evening and practice my Qigung and meditate. I stepped back behind our garage to the basketball court (which blocks me from both the road and the house, I’m not too inclined yet to have people see my not so graceful movements)…I was about 10 minutes into it and my daughter came over, cringing a bit, and handed me the phone and my husband was on it. "I told him you were doing your thing, but…" so I took the phone with very little loving kindness and snapped after being asked a question that could easily have waited and hung up. Then I had to laugh with myself at how quickly I was to bite when interrupted from my peace and quiet.

Not one to quit, I sunk my Chi a few times to try and restore calm and thought I wouldn’t waste a gorgeous evening and would meditate outside by my little baby willow tree. I settled down on my cushion under the tree thinking, yes, this is just right.  Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe in, Breathe out–swat. Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe–SWAT. Breathe–SWAT! ARGH! If I was really any GOOD at this, I thought, I wouldn’t even feel the mosquitoes. I humphed my way inside, I wonder if there were any mosquitoes in India when Buddha was meditating, I’m quite sure Tibet is too cold for mosquitoes and the Dalai Lama has never had to deal with them! I settled myself inside looking outside with a screen barrier between me and the mosquitoes and tried again. I had to laugh again, it was too ridiculous.

Later that night I remembered a story I had read recently (I can assure it is is driving my analytical, literature major soul insane not to be able to cite the source and page number). A Buddhist teacher had gone up into the mountains where he had heard that a hermit monk was living and focusing on learning patience. He found the monk high up and sitting in solitude meditating.  Have you learned patience yet, he asked the hermit. Yes, I have learned patience, the hermit replied. The teacher went on to laugh and tease and heckle the hermit until very shortly the hermit yelled at the teacher to leave him alone and allow him to learn patience in peace! The point being that it is very easy to learn patience in the solitude of a mountaintop, and a little more difficult down here in the world of husbands, phone calls, and mosquitoes. It is, however, an excellent place to practice finding happiness in my foolishness.

**NOTE: After finishing this entry, I opened another window to find a link for Qigong and Firefox froze up and had to shut down, I lost the whole post. There was a saying in the churches I grew up in, "Don’t pray for patience" because the only way to learn patience was to be pushed to the limit–I haven’t asked for patience, but apparently I’m getting some practice anyway.